Abstract

The process of assimilation claimed to domesticate the difference of the Jews by
encouraging Jews to adopt attributes of gentile society and shed markers of belonging
that identified Jews as other. However, the anti-Semitic basis of assimilation
prevented the proposed processes of integration and acceptance of Jews from ever
happening. The resulting situation for Jews who had gone through the process of
assimilation was a perpetual state of ‘inbetweenness’. Perceived as inalienably other,
yet in many ways representative of gentile society that projects this otherness, Jews
were subject to contradictory and conflicting societal expectations so that it was
impossible to fit in with established constructs. In Gertrud Kolmar’s prose and
dramatic works, textual devices denote the continuous inbetween status of the
characters.
The multiple engagements with fixed constructs such as stereotypes expose
how Jewish women were represented within perceived stable constructs. However,
deviations from conventional structures refute neat categorisation of the characters so
that inbetweenness is the prevailing status for all characters. Kolmar’s works do not
present a solution to inbetweenness; rather, the lack of solutions and satisfactory
conclusions to Kolmar’s prose and dramatic works is a textual device that accurately
portrays the nature of Jewish existence in Kolmar’s time. Similarly, analyses of space
and spatial markers in the prose works explore the complexities of Jewish existence
as appropriations of the same space are multiple and contradictory.
The thematic development of silence and sacrifice shows how the inbetween
subject engages with conventional modes of communication and religious belief. In
the prose and dramatic works Kolmar appropriates the significance of silence and
sacrifice for her time. Silence is removed from its role as a symbol of oppression of
Jews and used as a virulent, subversive mode of communication. Similarly, sacrifice
is examined as a ritual that attests to the existence of divine powers, and the
individual’s responsibility to attribute meaning to existence is explored. These
investigations reflect on the realities of Kolmar’s time when religious beliefs
(Judaism) were perceived as the source of otherness and the necessary sacrifices
made to ensure survival in a hostile environment, such as the forced selling of
Kolmar’s family home, were stripped of meaning. Kolmar’s prose and dramatic
works offer an insightful commentary on the problematic existence of Jews in the
1930s and 1940s in Germany. The complexities of existence are not overlooked in
Kolmar’s works; rather, they are perceived as manifestations of inbetweenness, which
are explored in these works in a manner that exposes the flawed structure of the
society that has led to the inbetween state of German Jews.